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The toast popped up, and he put a piece on each plate. “Sorry, no butter,” he told them.
Kee spooned the spaghetti over the toast, and Benni scrambled up in her chair, fork held in her chubby little hand, eyes alight with hunger.
“Let me cut it out for you,” Kee said, when Benni looked like she was about to shovel the whole thing into her mouth.
Wazza watched mother and daughter as Kee hovered over the table, cutting the toast into bite-size pieces, while Benni tried to steal some from the side. It struck him again at the domesticity of the scene. The simple act of a mother feeding her child. It twisted something into a knot deep inside him, and he had to turn away. An image of what Ava and Karri might have been like if they lived. Busying himself, he found three glasses and filled them with water from the jug in the fridge. He placed a glass in front of each of them, and drank his own in three large gulps, leaning up against the kitchen countertop.
Kee drank her water as well, watching him thoughtfully over the rim of the glass.
“The water from the tap is safe to drink,” Wazza told her.
Then he ran through some of the things she needed to know about living out here, while Benni slurped her lunch noisily. Kee merely nodded and continued to watch him, eating a lot more daintily than her daughter.
“Can I have some more toast, please?” Benni said.
“What beautiful manners,” Kee replied, touching her daughter lightly on the head.
“I’ll get it.” Wazza got out some more bread, thankful for something to keep his mind off those dark eyes watching him.
Benni ate two more pieces of toast with jam, and drank two full glasses of water, before finally giving a large sigh. He’d been trying to ignore the clock on the wall. He really needed to get back to the station before Steve wondered where he was. It’d be easy enough to get Steve to believe that an old plastic bag had become stuck on the camera, covering the lens. Odd pieces of litter could be found blowing around in the wind, even that far from civilization. But Steve would know how long the trip should take, and he’d be expecting Wazza back by now.
“Full now, Mummy,” Benni said, hopping down from her chair.
“Good girl. You can sit on the couch again.”
Wazza glanced at Kee just in time to see the look of utter love cross her face. Like she would give anything to make a daughter happy, to see her content. A muscle jumped in his cheek, and he pursed his lips.
“I can turn the TV on for her if you like,” he offered. “It runs off a satellite dish on the roof. You won’t get all the stations you’re used to in the city, but I should be able to find something suitable to watch.”
“Yes, please,” Benni said loudly, and then wilted slightly under her mother’s glare.
“All right,” Kee finally agreed. “Just for a little while.”
“Yay.” Benni clapped her hands.
Wazza found the remote and switched on the TV. It didn’t take him long to find the ABC station, which was playing a kid’s cartoon. Something about Dot and a kangaroo. He raised eyebrow in Kee’s direction, and she nodded. It would do.
“I need to show you a few things outside,” he said.
Kee’s gaze slipped between him and Benni. She really was reluctant to leave her child alone.
“We’ll only be five minutes,” he told her.
“Sure.” Kee squared her shoulders. “You stay here, Benni Bunny. I’m going to look at something outside.”
Benni’s eyes never left the screen, but she murmured, “Mm-hm.”
Wazza snagged his hat and sunglasses off the table and held the door open. The heat outside was palpable as it blasted past them into the cool interior.
It looked like a huge effort for Kee to tear her gaze from her daughter. “Poor little thing,” Kee said when she was standing beneath the patio outside. “She hasn’t had much normality in the last month. Just doing something simple, like watching TV, is the highlight of her day. I know she’s missed it. But she hardly ever complains.”
“She’s a great kid,” Wazza said, meaning it. There was so much more he wanted to say. That he could see why she was doing what she was doing. That if he were in the same situation, he’d do exactly the same. He didn’t blame her one little bit for doing everything in her power to keep her daughter safe. Even if it was the wrong thing in the eyes of the law. Some things that were wrong were also right.
Instead, he said, “Follow me. I’ll show you how to prime the generator and start it, if for any reason, the solar stops working.” Which it wouldn’t, not in the next few days, anyway, not with the cloudless skies of the dry season and the never-ending sunshine to keep the batteries full. But it was important she know how to do this. She seemed to have a lack of faith in herself, lack of faith in her abilities. But she’d got this far on her own. She needed to see how much of an achievement that was.
As he strode around the side of the building, he replaced his hat and put on his sunglasses, but he noticed Kee shielding her eyes from the blazing sun with her hand. “The generator is housed here,” he said, bending one knee so he could reach the latch on a small wooden lean-to. “It’s never locked. And you shouldn’t need to use it. This is all just a precaution.”
“Okay,” she said doubtfully.
